2024-09-03 Leads Meeting

Announcements

Michael

• People attend open-garage on wednesday

  • LHR Open House

Budget

Michael

• Michael and Philip met with other Chief E’s and Captains to discuss budget strategy and come to consensus

• Key takeaways:

  • Competition costs would not be included in budget

  • We should not be making up bullshit “in case something goes wrong” or buying a hundred extras of stuff

  • The budget is for setting the ratio of CR income to each team, so if we get more combustion gets less etc.

• I need justifications to address

  • Why do we need this

  • Why is this needed over cheaper options

  • Why is this needed this year

  • Why is this amount needed

15 mins

Recruiting

Michael/Philip

• Do not take recruiting lightly

  • Some of the people applying may have had LHR as a reason why they attended UT Austin in the first place. This process means a lot to some people

  • How we act in this process reflects on LHR as an org and Solar as a team

• Applications

  • System leads: start looking at applications soon. If you leave it for last minute it will be a huge workload

  • Prioritize time-commitment skills, effort in short-answer responses over technical experience. Don’t disregard technical experience however

• Interviews

  • Michael/Philip is willing to interview for any system if you need a slot filled

  • Two people interviewing at a time. Try to have both a boy and a girl whenever possible. Especially when interviewing girls, try to have a girl present.

  • Would appreciate if former system leads could participate in interviews to take load off the new leads

  • Questions should gauge

    • Dedication to things they care about

    • Curiosity about the solar car in particular

    • If they are a team player

    • Excitement to be in LHR

    • Willingness to try to solve problems they don’t know how to

Requirements

Philip

• Don’t be afraid to use division meetings and system meetings as time to work. Workdays need not and ought not be the only times people are collaborating.

  • This early on, most work is truly collaborative

  • Parallelization happens later on in design process

• Want list of requirements per system to be filled out by workday

  • Meaning what requirements do we need to figure out

• In three weeks, want requirements to be completely filled out

  • Meaning quantitatively if possible, with well-reasoned and deliberate calculations/simulations/justifications

• Requirements should be SMART goals

  • S - Specific

    • No - Unsprung components are strong enough to survive the forces the are under

    • Yes - Unsprung components must have minimum FOS > 1.2

  • M - Measurable

    • No - Have a very aerodynamic vehicle

    • Yes - Have a coefficient of drag < 0.255

  • A - Acheivable

    • No - Have a vehicle weight of 2 lbs

    • Yes - Have a vehicle weight of 500 lbs

  • R - Relevant

    • No - give members greater design autonomy: not part of the purpose of this document

    • The unsprung system will weigh <50 lbs

  • T - Time-based

    • Not as important for this exercise

    • I suppose we can include deadlines once we set them if we want

• This is a living document, and it may be subject to change later further on in design, but ideally it stays as close as possible to how it is when we “finish” it

  • The better we define our requirements now, the fewer changes we have to make later, and the easier design is

• Division meetings, discuss further division level requirements

  • May be more qualitative, and define requirements for processes

Past Workday Review

Systems

• Electrical

  • Yapped about new system architecture

  • PeripheralSOM schematic is ready for review and currently working on layout (Lakshay)

• Controls

• BPS

  • Members working on new projects

    • New Amperes board revision starting (Nathan)

    • Writting a CAN test for our new chip (Kadhir)

    • Driver for our new Temperature chip (Aniruddh)

• Power Gen

  • Members working on projects

    • MPPT reading (aleena)

    • reading about SOMs for blackbody (tanya)

    • developing and researching heliosphere PCB (tong)

    • creating database for eclipse software (nash and connor)

• Power Sys

• Data Acq

• Mechanical

• Dynamics

• Aeroshell

• Body

  • Members research/experimented with CAD

    • Frame members got exposure to weldments

    • Ergo members continued researching projects/developments for Pedal Box, Seat, Steering Wheel, etc. etc.

• Emech

Next Workday Plan

Systems

• Electrical

  • Done with PeripheralSOM (Lakshay)

• Controls

• BPS

  • Continue to work on projects from last week

  • Presenting rationale for next-gen BPS design decisions (like split battery box).

• Power Gen

  • start with update from everyone

  • everyone keep working

  • me, aleena, tanya will discuss system design

• Power Sys

• Data Acq

• Mechanical

• Dynamics

  • Work on the mechanical flowchart (together)

  • SRR planning (Group)

    • Subsystems split off and discuss as a group

  • Recruiting planning (regroup)

    • Subsystems split off or maybe together will be discussed in dynamics meeting

• Aeroshell

• Body

  • Continue research (ergo) and start any final research on composites (frame)

  • Nail down hybrid vs tubular frame (hinges on budget atp)

  • Move from using weldments in CAD to using FEA?

  • Continue to ball tf out like always

• Emech